Character Death: when to warn?

[runespoor]

Okay, so I was thinking about the Andromeda Table and I wondered... What does "Character Death" means, exactly? So yes, someone dies. But when do you warn for character death?... All of this is, of course, purely hypothetical.

Say it's a Blaise/Pansy fic in which Sirius falls through the veil. He's not important to the main pairing, but he matters to the reader of the books, so do you mark character death? Say the fic is Remus/Sirius - do you warn for character death or do you assumes the reader knew what he was in from?

Do you warn for death if it's canon death? If it's AU but the character died in canon anyway? For any character - disregarding his or her importance in the fic and/or the original material? Do you take the "character death" warning to means only the mains characters of the fic?

Do you warn for death if the character comes back, for instance as a ghost? Is it any different if he or she is somehow brought back to life, or if they appear as an Inferi, or as a vampire, or as a portrait, or as something like Riddle's diary?

Personally, I take "character death" to mean that I'd better not get too attached to the main characters of the piece, because one of them is going to eat it. Then again, I like a warning if the SO of the main character of the fic is already dead. And I think "character death" is not too much to ask when half the wizarding world as we know it bites it in a final battle of any sort. It's all very relative, I suppose.

Please comment, I'd love to read your input.

Comments

Re: Here via the Snitch

[runespoor7.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, can't the warning for death be a deterrent? I know it's that way for me. I might read a fic labelled dark; I won't touch character death.

Re: Here via the Snitch

[trobadora]

Well, what I do it with such a warning goes like this: open fic - read ending - decide whether to read fic. If I'm doubtful whether or not want to read something (and both "character death" and "darkfic" fall in that category because it depends too much on how exactly it's done) I check out the ending. A warning in itself has never deterred me from at least checking out a story - unless it's a squick, of course. But that's a different matter entirely. But I like to know what I should be wary of.